COVE Software reviews

Offering a word of caution with Cove.tool as it related to embodied carbon -

  • This is a concern specifically for designs that are either (1) very mutable, or (2) relatively complex/large. We have found that the most time-intensive portion of assembling a whole building life cycle assessment study is gathering accurate material quantity takeoffs. This is why my firm moved away from using Athena towards Tally, which integrates with Revit to automatically generate material quantity takeoffs from the BIM model (still requires oversight, but much less room for error that manual takeoffs). Specifically for building designs that are still shifting, or for complex buildings with many materials, the ability to automatically assess material quantity takeoffs is extremely important, which is unfortunately where cove.tool currently falls short.

  • The embodied carbon inputs are not automated and not automatically vetted within the tool – the recommended workflow is to open EC3, and copy/paste the GWP values from there. To clarify, there is no automatic link to EC3 at this time. Cove.tool does not have a built-in database of environmental impacts for building materials, so you will need to rely on another tool such as EC3 or Tally or OneClickLCA to populate it with credible data at this time, as far as I’m aware. Again, this is a concern for relatively complex projects.

Not to be a pessimist, just seems that this tool is currently very rudimentary and best used for concept design, or small projects.

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